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Colonialism in Algeria
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Hamad Haider Imran Khan once said “Colonialism deprives you of your self-esteem and to get it back you have to fight to redress the balance”. This means that violence might be the only way to end colonialism. Chapter 1, “On Violence,” in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and “Battle of Algiers” directed by Gillo Pontecorvo accurately portray the violence emerging from the French colonialism and the decolonization movement in Algeria. Over a period of 130 years, the most common type of violence in the colonial world was psychological violence. Psychological violence included the social injustices, bullying and most prominently, racial discrimination. All of which were supposed to make colonial subjects
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It's necessary to create this for ourselves, this excuse... We are soldiers and our only duty is to win… Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.
Colonel Mathieu of the French paratroopers was an intelligent individual and knew his way around words. He was only following his orders to subdue the effort. However, the violence of decolonization wouldn’t come to an end since Algeria was a cash crop for the French motherland.. Furthermore, the press was well aware of the naked truth about the violence of colonialism and of French army’s inhumane interrogation tactics. Some journalists still published in favor of the colonists. In the end, the French army was successful in demobilizing the FLN.
After the arrest of some national leaders, the public took things into its own hands. In Algeria, the public went on a rampage by 1960. Pontecorvo shows this in the scene towards the end when the French try to stop the masses as they burn tires on the streets and fight back. In the last scene, a French cop asks “what do you want?” and a native shouts “We want our Freedom”. After two years of fighting, Algeria gained its independence in 1962. The aftermath of this war for independence is the same as any other third world country which is forced to rebuilt itself from the ground. On the good side, the violence seems to have
Insurgency is defined as a rebellion against an indigenous government or a foreign occupier. In an asymmetric war there are two sides a strong and a weak side which have two strategies each. The French, who were the “stronger” side used “direct attack” which aimed at destroying the weak actor’s (Algeria) armed forces and thereby their capacity to offer violent resistance. During the seco...
Nothing good ever comes out of violence.Two wrongs never make it right, but cause harm. Contemporary society has not responded enough legacies of historical globalization. This essay will cover the following arguments such as residential schools, slavery and the Sierra Leone civil war.
Categorical terrorism, according to Jeff Goodwin, is defined as “the strategic use of violence and threats of violence, usually intended to influence several audiences, by oppositional political groups against civilian or noncombatants who belong to a specific entity, religious or national group, social class or some other collectivity, without regard to their individual identities or roles.” More so, in terms of definition, according to a study done by Jeffrey Record in 2003, there was a count of over 109 definitions of terrorism, covering 22 different categorical elements. During the 70s and 80s, the United Nations struggled to define the term, finally coming up with the following definition: “Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.”
The new Cambridge modern history - XII The era of violence 1898-1945. Cambridge University. Cambridge University Press. 1960, 1st edition
We analyzed an uncontrollable and in sense monster called colonialism. Aime Cesaire 's work provides the perspective of the colonized and " identifies the root of European and American violence within the founding acts of international colonialism." The violence and exploitation of slaves for economic means explains his point that "no one colonizes innocently" (Cesaire 1972). American History doesn 't show us these harsh realities of colonialism, dry scholarly text fails to describe the societies that were drained of their natural resources, land taken away, and every aspect of cultural lifestyles destroyed. This brutally honest history makes me define colonialism in a different way. Forceful control is a more accurate portrayal of colonizing. When I read Kristian William 's article " The Demand for Order and and Birth of Modern Policing" it was more clear to me in a modern context. I found it interesting to read when he said; ".. the greatest portion of the actual business of law enforcement did not concern protection of life and property, but the controlling of poor people." Because a system was constructed to racially disadvantage some people, their lack of opportunities and stumped life chances has kept them down in poverty, where the white supremacy can control
The 1940s hosted the turning points of World War II , where Algeria was attacked impetuously by greater powers in Operation Touch. In The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault faces life with no religious views even though the society around him has tenacious beliefs. He does what he wants without thinking like Adolf Hitler who persecuted millions because of their religion. The book orates how Meursault disregards feelings and religion and accepts all aspects of life in a realistic and tranquil manner. If he was attacked by Operation Touch before the trip to the beach and murder of the Arab man, Meursault may have found value in his life and ambitions to live.
The beginning of colonization also marks the beginning of decolonization. From the day the colonists start exploiting the colonized people and belittling the colonized people for the colonists' self-aggrandizement, the colonized ones have been prepared to use violence at any moment to end the colonists' exploitation (Fanon, 3).Decolonization is violent, there is a necessity for violence. This is a point that is repeated again and again throughout The Battle of Algiers and The Wretched of the Earth. Here, the focus will be on The Battle of Algiers to discuss the violence of
In 1830, a ruler of Tunis, Husain II Bey, signed a treaty with the French. This treaty “abolished the monopoly on produce, prohibited acts of piracy, confirmed previous trade treaties, made France most favored, and allowed European consuls to try all cases involving Europeans.” (Beck) Due to this treaty being signed, Husain II Bey “refused to allow the Ottoman official Tahir Pasha to land in Tunis to challenge the French blockade of Algeria.” (Beck). By preventing the Ottoman leaders from occupying a strategic location, the French were able to steal control of Algeria. Another method by which the French imperialists were able to invade and take control of Algeria was through warfare and military supremacy. The native Algerians were only equipped with, "hunting rifles, shotguns, and home made bombs," when facing the French imperialists, where the French imperialists had more modern weapons due to industrialisation.(Algerian war: 1954 to 1962) In order to take power away from the Turkish in Algeria, 37,000 members of the French army invaded the west of Algeria in June of 1830, and fought against the Turkish. The Turkish surrendered on July 4th of 1830, and the French invaded Algeria the following day. (Lutsky) However, “this success brings France only a small region round Algiers.” (History of Algeria) French imperialists were still threatened by
The 1950s was not a particularly good decade for France. The Fourth Republic, which had been established in the aftermath of the Second World War, remained unstable and lurched from crisis to crisis. Between 1946 and 1954, there had been a war in French Indo-China, between a nationalist force under Ho Chi Minh and the French. The war was long and bitter and towards the end, the French suffered the ignominy of losing the major fortress of Dien Bien Phu to the guerrillas on 7 May 1954. An armistice was sought with Ho Chi Minh, and the nations of North and South Vietnam emerged from the ashes of the colony. It is entirely likely that the success of the guerrillas influenced the Algerian insurrectionists, the National Liberation Front(FLN), in tactics and in the idea that the time was ripe to strike. It is clear that the FLN employed similar methods to those developed by the nationalists under Ho Chi Minh.1
Fanon start off his argument with describing how colonialism and decolonization are violent affairs. He describes the colonized and colonizer as old adversaries whose first meeting was rooted in violence and continued relationship was sustained at the point of a gun (Fanon, p. 2). He goes on to state that the colonized person is a fabricated person created by the colonizer and that the colonizer validates themselves, via wealth, through the colonial relationship. Decolonization, therefore, is the destruction of these fabrications and the liberation of ...
Structural violence is differentiated from direct violence both in terms of etiology and nature. D...
Algeria started as independent groups of natives under Ottoman control located in North Africa, East of Morocco. The people lived for years operating well under their own rules, culture, and pirating ways. The French were attracted by the Algerians' control of the Mediterranean Sea and the trading opportunities it had. Expanding on their empire, the French wanted to gain this influential power and ease of trading in the Mediterranean. After their successful conquest, France considered their newly obtained colony as an extension of their own country, and without consideration of the natives, they proceeded to change the daily lives of native Algerians forever. Through the process of colonization, the French drastically influenced the social, political and economic structures of Algeria by assimilating the native population.
In the second half of the twentieth century, started a process of decolonization, first in Asia and then in Africa. In 1949, India was one of the first country to gain its independence, followed by Burma, Malaysia, and Ceylon. In Africa the decolonization started a few years later, first in Libya and Egypt, and in the rest of the continent afterwards. The main colonists were the Great Britain and France. The history has shown that Great Britain succeeded to decolonize generally in peace while France had much more problems to give up its colonies, which led to numerous conflicts opposing the colonists and the colonized. It has been the case especially in Algeria where a murderous war lasted almost eight years. The philosopher Frantz Fanon has studied the outbreak of this conflict as he was working in Algeria and he spent some time working on the question of colonialism, drawing the conclusion that violence was the only way to get rid of colonists. This essay will analyse who was Fanon and why he came to such a conclusion along with the reasons why it could be said that he is right ,and finally, the arguments against his statement. Finally, it will aim to prove that even though Fanon had valid points, diplomacy could have been for efficient and less tragic rather than his support to violence.
A. Adu Boahen's African Perspectives on Colonialism neatly classifies African responses to European colonialism during both phases of invasion and occupation during the 19th century with precise labels according to their nature or time period. However, the reactions can also be loosely grouped into two diametric characterizations: peaceful and violent. Although creating this dichotomy seems a gross generalization and oversimplification of the colonial African experience, it more importantly allows for a different perspective- one that exposes the overwhelming success of the typically peaceful or pacifist reaction in contrast to the little gain and large losses of the violent response.
I will now look at a passage focusing on Rene Girard’s ideas from his book Violence and the Sacred. “Once his basic needs are satisfied (indeed, sometimes even before), man is subject to intense desires, though he may not know precisely for what. The reason is that he desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess. The subject thus looks to that other person to inform him of what he should desire in order to acquire that being. If the model, who is apparently already endowed with superior being, desires some object, that object must surely be capable of conferring an even greater plenitude of being. It is not through words, therefore, but by the example of his own desire that the model conveys to the